Comment by le-mark
Comment by le-mark 2 days ago
LineageOS is an open source android distribution. Can anyone comment on who might use LineageOS and why?
Comment by le-mark 2 days ago
LineageOS is an open source android distribution. Can anyone comment on who might use LineageOS and why?
I use LineageOS on all my devices (it's actually my main criteria when buying a phone) to mainly install apps from F-Droid without relying on the Google Play Store.
It has the same familiar look and feel on all devices and by experience is way snappier than the original ROM.
Google Wallet also doesn't work on Graphene OS.
I just looked into this and in the US there's basically no technical answer that I'd expect to be reliable.
You've got a few choices:
* magsafe wallet (~$10) without nfc shield with a physical card
* "purewrist" prepaid debit card (would be good for a kid maybe)
* garmin smartwatch that gets linked properly like Google Pay would
If you're in the EU there are a ton more options, specifically "Curve Pay" and possibly "Amex UK".
Very annoying.
Most everything banking related works for me. 2 different credit unions, roboinvesting, paypal & paypal-alikes, credit card, car insurance, etc.
What does not work? An LG app to control an air conditioner.
Also I have to hide root from the roku app, which I use for the headphone because it works better than the headphone on the remote.
Super important stuff, no wonder they lock that down so much.
Ok I did skip one real thing for the sake of the funny. I can't do google tap to pay. That's about it.
This is all the same on a rooted standard rom as on Lineage.
>What does not work? An LG app to control an air conditioner.
I use GrapheneOS. Thankfully I've had few things not work. Google Pay being one of them, the other is the garage door (Liftmaster)[1].
I genuinely find it disgusting. Thankfully I rent the apartment (and attached garage) so I've never given them any money. At the end of the day there's literally zero justification for a garage door opening app to brick itself if it's run on a unapproved platform. The official[2] statement states:
"Our customers rely on us to make access simple without sacrificing quality and reliability. Unauthorized app integrations, stemming from only 0.2% of myQ users, previously accounted for more than half of the traffic to and from the myQ system, and at times constituted a substantial DDOS event that consumed high quantities of resources."
AKA "we are incapable of implementing a basic ratelimit. faulty third-party clients made our AWS bill go up a bit so we are going to go on an irrational crusade against third-party integrations of any kind and expend more resources doing this than would be spent by giving users a simple API to use"
[1]: https://xdaforums.com/t/root-detection-for-myq-apps.3858887/ [2]: https://chamberlaingroup.com/press/a-message-about-our-decis...
Banking apps that do not require Google Play services, such as Bank of America, run just fine. Besides, you can always open a browser and use the web version. Losing banking apps and "tap to pay" is a small price to pay for avoiding having your data constantly siphoned by Google.
> Besides, you can always open a browser and use the web version.
Not possible in many parts of the world where banks force you to use their app for basic banking functionality.
3 banking apps running fine, until revolut decided to pull a douche move. i've ended my contract with them.
2 banking apps running fine.
Got a Xperia Z1 in 2013. Sony stopped updating it at some point in 2014-2015, which is stupid, but the hardware was still like new (which is the great thing about Sony phones) so I rooted it and managed to install it. Can't remember if it was already named "LineageOS" or "CyanogenMod" at the time. However, it lasted with me until nov. 2020 when I dropped and the screen cracked, made it to be changed but the replacement was kinda bad so used it as an excuse to get a 1ii.
I did the same with this "new" phone, that is going to be 5 years with me - since also got that only-two-years-of-updates thing, threw LineageOS on it and it's going as new.
So as I said the last time I saw a post about it in here, thanks to LineageOS I can use a phone for way more than they are set out to be forgotten. It's a great project and it's really sad Google are making things harder for them for the sake of "security".
If your phone is more than a few years old it likely doesn't get updates from the manufacturer anymore. LineageOS will get you to the latest Android with security patches. Same sort of deal as with OpenWRT for a router really, you get all the features and security patches but at the loss of the firmware that the device came with and its propriety enhancements.
I have a Samsung Tablet and Samsung's version for said tablet is a giant mountain of crap, full of bloatware, so I installed LineageOS on it. Also my old phone and my old old phone run LineageOS because I'm just logged in to Google on my {current_phone}.
I ran LineageOS on my Moto X4 for many years. It was much faster without the OEM Moto and carrier apps, and was faster again when I installed it without Google Play Services. Same thing with an old Kindle Fire tablet, finally made it fast enough to practically use.
It's worth mentioning that newer Samsung phones and tablets have an eFuse that is blown when you unlock them. This permanently disables some functionality of their separate secure element (IIRC). If you are planning to run LineageOS forever, it would probably not be a big issue, but if you just want to try a third-party OS or ever resell the device, it could be an issue.
Tab A7, old and not worth it even for a low price, too sluggish even with LineageOS but definitely better than stock of course.
My personal take is that most Android devices no longer get updates pretty soon after the release (where pretty soon means 2-3 years). Google promises 7 years of support for their newer devices, but most vendors don't.
LineageOS is, besides the fact hat it is more open for non google stuff, providing Android Updates for older devices. While this does not necessarily provide better security (rooted devices are often not considered as secure), you still get the newer Androids security patches and FEATURES. Furthermore you are more open to do what you want.
However LineageOS does to my knowledge not support bootloader re-locking on most devices, which might be a security risk (see https://grapheneos.org/install/web#locking-the-bootloader).
Google promises 7 years of support for their newer devices, but most vendors don't.
Unless you have a Pixel 6 and your security update goes missing?
(Didn't get the July security update and the October update is still missing? https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1o2bhur/where_... )
There were no Android or Pixel security patches for either July or October.
Android July 2025: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2025-07-01
Pixel July 2025: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/pixel/2025...
Android October 2025: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2025-10-01
Pixel October 2025: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/pixel/2025...
Not shipping an update in months when there aren't patches isn't a broken promise. They officially extended the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 major updates from 3 to 5 years but didn't say they'd provide a release in months with no security patches.
Most OEMs don't provide the privacy and security patches properly from day one. Fairphone lags behind 1-2 months on partial backports to older releases and multiple years for major updates with the full patches. Fairphone 4 and Pixel 6 both released in October 2021, but the Fairphone 4 is on the initial release of Android 13 (not Android 13 QPR3) with an end-of-life Linux 4.19 kernel branch. Android 13 is approaching end-of-life too, but still receives partial backports for now. Pixel 6 is on Android 16 QPR1 and moved from the Linux 5.10 branch to Linux 6.1. Pixels get the security patches in the month they're released vs. 1-2 month delays for the Fairphone 4.
You are the expert, but do we know? Isn't it possible with the new three month embargo that they did ship some of the December patches, but don't list them in the notes because they'll only be released publicly and in AOSP in December?
There were no Android or Pixel security patches for either July or October. It's not a break of any promise. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562792 provides links to the bulletins and a comparison to a device marketed as supposedly providing long support.
To not have Google built into all alspects of your life too much. Although it still uses some essential Google services, it does take out most unnecessary stuff, which you often can optionally add later in a possibly more secure form, but sometimes can't, which will cause very specific apps using these services not to function, or these features of those apps.
And if Chat Control will be implemented in Google Android, then LineageOS also offers you a way out of that, which is a huge plus of course if you ask me.
I want to use an OS that isn't loaded with spyware, so non-FOSS Android just doesn't fit the bill for me.
You can run LineageOS on the Nintendo Switch if you want: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/nx/variant1/
And it's a decently recent version with more-or-less official Nvidia Tegra drivers, too. For the variety of weird-but-ubiquitous devices that have a bootloader hack, LineageOS is the route to a working smart device that anyone can pick up and use.
Even if you run LineageOS without Google, LineageOS still phones home to Google for DNS and captive portal checks.
for some certain models it offers updated android versions (while the company doesn't)
Every version of Lineage has rooted ADB accessible in the developer options. If you want root for apps, you must load Magisk. If root is important to you, this is your OS.
Lineage puts out all the patches that they can, every month, unlike OEMs. If current patches are important to you, this is your OS.
Lineage allows you to run it without any Google closed source code.
These are some serious advantages, depending upon what you are trying to do.